Venezuela says it will tap $2.2B from a Chinese credit line to boost oil production at joint ventures with China National Petroleum (NYSE:PTR), in a jolt for Venezuela's struggling oil industry and a show of unity with a key ally.

CNPC and Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA will seek to raise production by ~277K bbl/day, Pres. Maduro says, adding that the increased output would boost oil shipments to China to more than 800K bbl/day.

Venezuela has borrowed more than $50B from China under a financing arrangement created in 2007, in which a portion of its crude and fuel sales to China are used to pay down loans.

Kazakhstan's Kashagan oil field produced ~201K tons of oil, or nearly 1.7M barrels, in October, its first full month of operation, finally showing some results after multi-year delays and $55B spent in development.

The October output figure is the equivalent of 52.6K bbl/day, while Kazakh officials have said that in order to reach commercial output the field needs to achieve stable production of at least 75K bbl/day.

CNPC would bundle businesses including hotels, hospitals, schools and utility companies into regional unit in a reorganization in which the assets would be taken over by local governments or folded into joint ventures with outside investors, according to the report.

CNPC employed ~1.46M people last year, making it the world's sixth biggest employer.

PTR reportedly began operating a 200K cm tank last week in Rudong, eastern Jiangsu province, as well as regasification facilities and pipelines, part of a second-phase expansion that brought its handling capacity to 6.5M metric tons/year, up from a 3.5M; after the expansion, Rudong has 680K cm of storage space.

PTR also is test running a new storage tank this week at its Dalian terminal in the northeast, which is expected to double the receiving capacity to 6M metric tons/year, according to the report.

Total (NYSE:TOT) confirms it signed a heads of agreement with the National Iranian Oil Co. for the development of phase 11 of South Pars, the world's largest gas field.

TOT is the first western energy company to sign a major deal with Iran since the lifting of international sanctions earlier this year; the French major says it will avoid U.S. sanctions on Iran by using its own euro-denominated cash to finance the deal.

TOT says it will operate the SP11 project with a 50.1% stake, while NIOC subsidiary Petropars will have a 19.9% stake and China's CNPC (NYSE:PTR) will 30%.

The project’s first phase - the drilling of as many as 30 wells in the Persian Gulf - will require a $2B investment, and a second phase, expected when the wells are producing, will require an additional $2B, TOT Patrick Pouyanne says; an Iranian official said yesterday the project would require a $6B investment.

The SP 11 project will have a production capacity of 1.8B cf/day, or 370K boe/day, and the produced gas will be fed into Iran's gas network.

Iran will sign a preliminary deal with Total (NYSE:TOT) to help develop an offshore gas field, the first under its new oil contract framework with a foreign company, WSJ reports, citing remarks from an oil ministry official in Tehran.

The “heads of agreement” for development of the giant South Pars gas field also will include China National Petroleum (NYSE:PTR) and Iran’s state-owned Petropars, and will represent an investment of $6B, according to the government official.

The agreement, which has not yet been confirmed by the companies, would mark a key step toward the return of Western companies to Iran’s giant fields; TOT and CNPC both signed deals years ago to develop the project before sanctions forced them to pull out.

The South Pars field, which is shared by Iran and Qatar in the Gulf, contains 14T cm of gas, ~8% of the world’s known reserves.

PetroChina (PTR-1.6%) says its Q3 profit fell 77% Y/Y to 1.2B yuan ($177M), as improved earnings from refining and chemicals were outweighed by losses on production and weaker performance from its natural gas and pipelines units; revenue fell 3.8% Y/Y to 411.4B yuan.

Like other Chinese state-run energy firms, PTR does not release quarterly operational data, but Bloomberg calculates Q3 operating losses of 1.5B yuan from E&P, based on half-year and nine-month data; earnings from natural gas and pipeline operations fell 39% to 6.4B yuan, while profit in refining, chemicals and marketing jumped to 9B yuan from a 5.4B yuan loss a year ago.

PTR's net income, which recorded its first-ever quarterly loss during Q1, fell 94% Y/Y to 1.73B yuan for the first nine months of the year.

Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) unveils plans to install four large floating production, storage and offloading vessels at the giant Libra offshore oil area starting in 2020, with extended well testing beginning in the middle of next year.

PBR expects production Libra will be 120K-180K bbl/day of oil, with all the natural gas not used to power the production system likely to be re-injected as the most economic solution.

But an official at France's Total (NYSE:TOT), a partner with a 20% stake in the project, says the company remains concerned over how much oil the deepwater project will yield given the technical challenges of the reservoir, which rests under miles of salt and ocean.

Operator PBR owns 40% of the area, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) owns 20% along with TOT, and China's Cnooc (NYSE:CEO) and China National Petroleum (NYSE:PTR) each own 10%.

Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry says 26.5K metric tons of crude were loaded for export into the pipelines, but reaching stable production will take “some time” as commissioning work continues both offshore and onshore.

“Restarting production even in this low oil price environment is good because it means beginning to see some returns on that massive investment,” says IHS Energy's Andrew Neff. “The real payoff will be phase 2,” which has the potential to increase output to 1M bbl/day.

Work to bring the giant Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan onstream is progressing as planned and some crude has already been processed and put in storage, according to the country's energy minister, who adds that Kazakhstan will not reduce oil output in line with OPEC plans.

Kashagan, which cost ~$50B to develop and has suffered many delays, is initially expected to produce 75K bbl/day, rising to 150K-180K bbl/day in November and December this year.

A newly built Chinese refinery near its border with Myanmar faces a delayed start-up after PetroChina (PTR+3.1%) balked at paying an extra tax for piping crude oil through the country, Reuters reports.

PTR parent China National Petroleum early last year began trial operations of a deep sea port and 2,400-km pipeline through Myanmar to China's Yunnan province, where CNPC also has been building a 260K bbl/day refinery at Anning to process the oil; the company completed construction of the Anning plant around July and had aimed for test operations this month, but the project reportedly now faces delays.

China has been on a diplomatic offensive in Myanmar since the new government came to power in April, hoping to ensure good ties with its resource-rich neighbor.

By guaranteeing a customer for the entire output of the big new field in the Indian Ocean, the BP contract clears the way for Eni to make its final investment decision on the multibillion-dollar project.

The deal also could add impetus to Eni's efforts to sell a stake in its Mozambique assets, with ExxonMobil (XOM-1%) considered the most likely buyer.

Eni holds a 50% stake in the Area 4 block involved in the contract, with the other half owned by China's CNPC (NYSE:PTR), Portugal's Galp Energia (OTC:GLPEF), South Korea's Kogas and Mozambique’s national oil company.

Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry says production will resume at the Kashagan offshore oil field by early October, with initial output of 75K bbl/day and rising to 150K-180K bbl/day in November and December.

The $50B Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea already was years behind schedule when it achieved first oil production in 2013, but operations were halted just a month later when a leak in a pipeline forced the whole project to shut down.

The partners in the project include Eni (NYSE:E), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B), Total (NYSE:TOT), ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM), China National Petroleum (NYSE:PTR), Inpex and Kazakh state-held KazMunayGas.